Clarissa Eden: A Memoir

By Clarissa Eden

Book Overview

In 1955, at the astonishingly young age of 34, Clarissa Eden entered No. 10 Downing Street as the wife of the new Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. A renowned beauty, she was at home with her mother's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0753824310
• ISBN13: 9780753824313
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Phoenix
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

A combination of shrewdness and intelligence

Clarissa is the young wife of England's leading politician whose life had been a flaming dedication to the Empire and all humanitarian ideals that were then believed to erase national lines. Anthony Eden prefaced his work with dedication. What the Suez war did to the minds of his time was upsetting. Anthony remained, in theory, the ennobling Prime Minister that dedicated his life for the fulfillment of his historic mission: to preserve the Commonwealth. His main problem was when he saw the Empire slidding under their feet. Clarissa lived with the man who, if he had received more meaningful support from the superpower -USA- could have stopped and indeed eliminated the usual orgy permitted by inexperienced newcomers to the political arena in different parts of the Commonwealth World. Clarissa witnessed how startups have released their inhibitions and brought their ruling to the state of raw excitement which was driven to add the fateful effect on their people. Clarissa saw many emerging and young leaders schooled in a state in which the relation of the subject to the sovereign had no basis other than obedience; comfortable only in the presence of authority. Like her husband, she had combination of shrewdness, energy and intelligence with a political flexibility unseen in Europe since Talleyrand. The book is interesting to read.

Clarissa Eden Memoir

This is a brilliant memoir written by a woman of great intelligence and sophistication. She was the niece of Winston Churchill and lived at Downing Street during the Second World War. She later married Anthony Eden. Her gift for description, her humor, and her wisdom illuminate a time of great importance, and her portraits, whether of social or political figures, are deft and shrewd. One can only hope that this is the first of many books to come from Clarissa Eden.